Housing Lessons From A New Shower

Tiles are rectified in name only

There is no good way to find out that you have to spend thousands of dollars on an avoidable repair. I did by stepping on an upright shard of glass in the shower while holding our baby. I tried to brush it aside, only to step on it again. One of our older kids had recently slammed shut the glass shower door. Now I knew it needed to be replaced. Fortunately the baby was unharmed and my foot healed quickly. As it did, my wife and I learned that new glass would cost about $2,500. We gradually realized our opportunity cost was quite low to put in the larger shower we dreamed of and tear out the massive tub that wasted so much space in our master bathroom.

So began a minor construction project in my house, which intimately taught me a surprising amount about the brass tacks of building. YIMBYs should educate themselves about development. Hopefully my experience is useful.

Contractors are expensive

Some lessons were predictable.

We hoped that redoing half of our bathroom would cost about $10,000. Some of you are laughing right now because you know that was a gross underestimate. The price tag ended up around $15,000, not including some items we decided to have done while we had the contractors around. We kept the counter/vanity area but everything else had to go, starting with the tile floor. Any bathroom remodel would be a big one.

We got quotes from three reputable contractors who came highly recommended. We chose the least expensive quote, not just because the others were around $20,000.

The literal mom and pop business we chose had minimal overhead: no website, no advertising, just word of mouth. We liked how the guy in charge communicated. He was blunt, saying we could find someone cheaper but he would rather do things the right way. His wife being the architect would simplify the process. He made clear that full cost would depend on what he saw behind the walls when demolition started.

This was all my first reminder that construction is inherently difficult to scale. Structures are built by hand as a rule, almost always on-site. I suppose we could have bought a pre-fab shower in the footprint of a standard tub, but we still would have had to tear up the tile on the floor and walls. Plus we wanted something extra wide.

Missing middle competes with money-losing projects

A lot of residential construction, from a new detached single-family home to a big apartment building, is built “on spec,” as a speculative asset. The developer hopes the property will be purchased or rented out for a price that yields a profit. As a rule that is true of missing middle housing, from duplexes to small apartment buildings. You can “house hack” with a cushy FHA loan as a property owner occupying one of up to four units, but most people, including me, have zero interest in becoming a developer.

As you go down the scale to smaller projects, a lot of construction is for a property owner commissioning a specific product for their own consumption — a custom house, a new shower — with little or no consideration of financial return. So small multi-family projects are competing directly with people spending pretty freely, sometimes millions. I am sure plenty of folks view their personal project as an investment, though how many of them do any financial modeling? A dream house is often conspicuous consumption: losing money is the point. That raises the opportunity cost faced by potential financiers of missing middle housing. And missing middle is often a bespoke design on a small lot with unique quirks. Contractors suited to such work do a brisk business updating bathrooms instead. From financing to building, our shower hints at why middle housing went missing.

Construction is messy and disruptive

Especially next to your bedroom. Demolition generated an unbelievable amount of oppressive dust — why does not one talk about that?! Our air purifier found a new home upstairs. I cannot imagine the dust without it. The contractors appreciated the machine and said they might get one for future projects. There was also noise and probably other minor inconveniences I forgot. The ceiling below shook so much that the glass globe came off of a lighting fixture, seemingly shattering as it fell. By the grace of God, no one was in the room at the time. The project lasted a bit more than four weeks, which felt like two or three months, even though we liked the guys a lot.

We YIMBYs should not brush off the irritations and inconveniences caused by construction. However transitory, they can be significant. The good news is, if folks do their jobs well, you end up with some nice new stuff, which is good because …

Old building materials were and are much worse

Our townhome was built around 2000, so the walls are sheetrock. I was stunned to learn that demoing plaster would have been even dustier and messier! My city, Alexandria, has many historic homes which our contractors said are a pain to work on, from crumbly plaster to asbestos and lead paint to old wiring and plumbing. They emphatically affirmed it is actually good that, “They don’t make ‘em like they used to.”

There have been some nice innovations too. Our new shower pan is a special waterproof foam that should last decades. Our old one was breaking down at the edges and on track to fail spectacularly, causing significant water damage. A related lesson was that cheap construction is often more expensive in the long run.

Permitting is bizarre — we had an archeological review

Yes, really, the permit issued by my city included, as far as I could tell, an individual signing off on some kind of archeological review for a bathroom renovation on the third floor of a townhouse built no more than 25 years ago. Even if it was just someone checking a box, I will never forget how strange and almost charmingly funny it was. Less humorously, it made me wonder even more about the bureaucratic hoops developers have to jump through to do the most basic, mundane, cookie cutter things.

Rectified tiles can still vary in size

Maybe the most interesting thing I learned: Tile varies a lot by size piece to piece, by the nature of the manufacturing process. The standard tile you would buy off the shelf varies so much that someone laying it down has to sort and match the individual pieces so that they line up. Rectified tile, as the name indicates, is carefully cut and validated with the aim of high precision, at considerable extra cost to boot, yet it can still vary quite a lot. My best recollection from the conversation with a contractor is by 1/8th of an inch, online I am seeing 1/32nd, but either way that is not nothing. To reiterate, tile work involves accounting for subtle differences and carefully planning out where each piece goes. Bricklaying is notoriously difficult to automate. I started our project with healthy respect for builders and skilled laborers. It left me even more skeptical that humanity will prefab and automate our way to cheaper construction.

You feel some good design more than you notice it

Our original shower had an undersized niche — shelf for soaps — in the wall opposite the door. That wall was bumped out from the main wall and we had to start demolition to confirm that its only purpose was to hold the little niche, wasting a lot of floor space and making the shower narrow. I was delighted to have the whole thing torn down. The new wall created for the shower includes an oversized double niche.

This pictures helps the next part makes sense: The bottom edge of the bottom niche became the vertical reference point for the tiling. We selected horizontal reference points too, based on how small cut pieces would have to be to reach the vertical edges. A tiler for a volume builder might just pick a corner and work outward from there.

Being intentional about layout meant a nontrivial amount of math and geometry. As the contractor who did most of the tiling put it, with more than a little pride, ‘You don’t notice good design.’ It fades into the background, and you are left with how a space makes you feel. Order and consistency help a space feel relaxing, which was definitely our goal for the shower. And it is a refreshing oasis, I am pleased to report.

The kids enjoy the shower too. It is a standard 60 inches long, in case someone wants to add a sliding glass door. For the foreseeable future, we are using a shower curtain.

Contingencies are almost inevitable

Our shower helped melt away the minor stress of having to place a second order for tile, enough to hit the minimum and leave a lot unused, but less than our first order, so it probably cost more per piece. Same story for paint, plus I forgot to mention our contractor’s discount when buying the first of quite a few extra cans. These are very mild examples of what builders call contingencies. Plans change. Stuff goes wrong. Materials turn out to be more expensive, or are stolen from the jobsite. At some point we might have bought tile of the wrong color and had to return it. One of the blue floor tiles was omitted and the guys had to come fix it, a somewhat delicate process.

This year, I heard from people who would know that construction is the messiest part of development. I also learned it for myself. The men and women who work in the building trades and go the extra mile to do great work deserve everyone’s admiration.

I must acknowledge how profoundly blessed we are to have a good home, and the means to make it more useful and beautiful. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and best wishes for the New Year, from my family to you and your loved ones. The story of Christ’s birth is the story of a young family searching for a place to stay. Each of us is called to welcome the stranger.

Thanks to my 701 subscribers, especially my 10 paid subscribers. If you enjoy this blog or want to work together please contact lucagattonicelli@substack.com. Check out YIMBYs of Northern Virginia, the grassroots pro-housing organization I founded.

To read more about the cost of building, check out this little gem by

Andrew Burleson

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Construction cost is a big deal